Over break, in my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, there isn’t much to do on the weekends besides peruse the local Sephora outlet tucked into the Kohl’s. Usually, while my mom is using her endless supply of Kohl’s cash, I love to roam the aisles of Sephora, swatch makeup that is way out of my budget, and use $100 lotion on my hands. Recently on TikTok, I have been warned of a certain demographic to look out for on my Sephora trips, the Ten Year Old Sephora Girls. According to TikTok, these entitled little girls ruin testers, harass employees, and make luxury makeup sell out within minutes. Seeing videos of these little girls begging their parents to buy them the new Drunk Elephant retinol cream, I would laugh and just think of it as a few misbehaving kids here and there. To my shock, I witnessed these Ten Year Old Sephora Girls in the wild at my local Sephora. I turned my head, hearing them screaming for joy that they had the Drunk Elephant Bronzi Drops. I watched them dart from the Glow Recipe section, to the Sol de Janeiro section, to Drunk Elephant, to Summer Fridays within a ten-minute trip. At the end of it all, the girls begged their moms to buy them the handful of products they had, probably retailing for at least $300.
I don’t mean to use the whole “when I was your age” trope, but when I was a ten year old, I was still playing with Polly Pockets and Barbies. I hadn’t even thought about using luxury makeup or any at all, save my little flip phone lip gloss set. On social media in the last few years, there seems to be this new wave of tween-aged girls looking like they could be much older because of the way they dress and the makeup they wear. While I laugh at it kind of in shock, there has to be some underlying reasons for this– why are young girls feeling as if they should look much older? Why has Sephora become a common place for little girls to hang out together?
In the age of parents providing their toddlers with tablets and elementary schoolers with phones, there is much more accessibility for young girls to be influenced by random people on the internet. Many of these young girls see models posting videos of themselves using the newest and most expensive makeup products in “get ready with me” style videos. They see unrealistic standards of beauty every single day through social media, not to mention with the TikTok Shop function, advertisement has increased on TikTok exponentially. Every five or so videos there is an influencer saying “Run, don’t walk for this new beauty product!” The negative influence that social media has on young girls isn’t anything new. Instead of Instagram photoshopping making girls feel insecure about their bodies, it now has become an issue of wealth, and keeping up with the newest and most expensive products to fit in.
I have found that the main reason behind this new surge of ten-year-old girls in Sephora is the loss of third places for young girls, making the mall a perfect spot to mingle and hang out with their friends. A third place is the concept introduced by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, to have places in the community to meet and socialize that are not work, school, or domestic places. The gradual loss of third places in a community has unknown harmful effects, but they are essential for community members to socialize away from work or school settings. The mall has become an important third space for many young girls to socialize with their friends, but it encourages them to spend money, exacerbating the insecurity that young girls face by not being able to afford the next best beauty product.
As I continue to observe the flurry of Sephora Ten Year Olds in my future trips, I can’t shake the realization that the phenomenon of young girls roaming the store is a symptom of larger societal issues. Their activity isn’t solely about their behavior or desires, but instead unfolds as a consequence of early exposure to social media, unrealistic beauty standards, and the erosion of community spaces for young girls.
Short n’ Sweet
